Florida State-Miami rivalry has uncanny habit of producing close games with dramatic finishes

Since 2000, seven of the 11 games between the Seminoles and Hurricanes have been decided by four points or less

October 5, 2010|By Andrew Carter, Orlando Sentinel

TALLAHASSEE — It hasn't mattered if the offenses have been potent or powerless. It hasn't mattered if the defenses have been porous or powerful. Hasn't mattered if the game has been played in Tallahassee or in South Florida. Day or night. Mondays or Saturdays.

No matter what the circumstances or styles, regardless of the personnel or coaches, a clear trend has emerged in the Florida State-Miami rivalry: Close games. Very close games.

So what, you say. The Seminoles and Hurricanes play tight games. No kidding.

It's more than that, though. During the past decade, Florida State's series against Miami has produced narrower margins of victory than those found in any name-brand college football rivalry.

Since 2000, when Florida State left Miami with a 27-24 defeat, the winning team between the Seminoles and Hurricanes has won by an average margin of six points. That doesn't include Miami's 16-14 victory in the 2004 Orange Bowl.

Since 2000, Miami's 49-27 victory in 2001 has been the only game between Miami and Florida State that has been decided by a double-digit margin. In the past 11 meetings between the teams, including that Orange Bowl, seven games have been decided by four points or less.

"Both teams always show up, you never know what's going to happen and it's always close," Seminoles quarterback Christian Ponder said. "[It] always goes down to the last minute … it always somehow finds a way to get close [and be] a good game."

Ponder has been on both ends. He and the Seminoles survived a wild fourth quarter to win at Miami in 2008. Then they lost a season ago when time ran out on Florida State near the Miami goal line. Those games were decided by a total of six points.

No, Florida State and Miami haven't competed for national championships in a while. That fact has wiped away some of the series' luster.

But if the purpose of a rivalry is to produce close, exciting finishes, then no game has done it better the past 10 years than Florida State-Miami. Among seven other famed college football rivalries — including Alabama-Auburn, Army-Navy, Florida-Georgia, Notre Dame- USC and Oklahoma Texas — Michigan and Ohio State produced games with the second-smallest margins of victory the past 10 years.

In those games between the Wolverines and Buckeyes, the winning team won by an average of 11.7 points — almost twice the margin of Florida State's games against Miami.

Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher and his players earlier this week had a difficult time explaining the phenomenon. They each said a variation of the same thing: Competition between the Seminoles and Hurricanes brings out the best of both teams, thus resulting in a stretch of games that weren't decided until late in the fourth quarter.

But that answer implies that the teams who suffered more lopsided defeats in years past wanted to win less than the Florida State-Miami teams of the past 10 years. And that can't be true.

Perhaps Ponder described it best: "It always somehow finds a way to get close." As if there's a higher power at work. It could be random, the close games the rivalry has produced lately, but Fisher didn't believe that. He hypothesized the Florida State-Miami game inspired players to perform beyond their ability.

"Sometimes [in that game] you do things that guys don't ever do on the practice field," he said. "You don't ever see them do it. It's a pride — it's a competition level. And that's the thing that makes athletics, to me, so great. There's nothing you can predict."

Except, it would seem, the reliability of another dramatic finish in the Florida State-Miami rivalry.

Andrew Carter's Chopping Block blog can be read at OrlandoSentinel.com/choppingblock and he can be reached at acarterb@orlandosentinel.com. Subscribe to our college sports e-mail newsletter at OrlandoSentinel.com/newsletters.